Is this finally the end for Kings Cross?
It’s a red-lit beacon to all those who want to party. But redevelopment approval of a raffish Sydney landmark has some seething.
If there is a place that can evoke the raucous spirit of Kings Cross it’s the Bourbon, cradle of countless late-night romances and even more hangovers. Yet, with a stroke of the pen, last drinks have been called on the white colonnaded Sydney hotel in the biggest makeover of the fabled strip for 50 years.
Some are calling it the end of the Cross, a jumble of seedy bars, strip clubs, pumping nightclubs, hostels and eateries of mixed quality that is home to 20,000 people and a red-lit beacon to all those who want to party.
Others insist that is no bad thing given the area’s reputation.
The prime location a stone’s throw from the central business district and abutting some of the world’s priciest real estate in the millionaire’s row of Potts Point meant one developer or another was always going to put their imprint on the Cross.
But the scale of the $65.5m project advanced by businessman Sam Arnaout has horrified a cross-section of locals, who are adamant it should never have been approved. They profess to be fighting for the soul of the Cross.
“The place has been changing but if this particular part of it goes, that’s the end of it, and I don’t say that lightly,” says Robyn Greaves, the no-nonsense co-ordinator of the Kings Cross Community Centre.
Musician Ross Johnston, 57, who with partner and cabaret performer Vashti Hughes is a local of 25 years’ standing, fears the village atmosphere will be destroyed.
“It’s just a way of squeezing more money out of the place with no regard for the consequences for the residents,” he complains.
But in a rare interview Arnaout tells Inquirer the project will rejuvenate the Cross after late-night lockout laws and Sydney’s disastrous Covid lockdown kicked the life out of it. “This is the beginning of a renaissance,” he says. “The place is a ghost town in the evening … there’s no night-life, no buzz. This will bring reactivation, it’ll bring life, it’ll bring energy and reactivate dormant buildings that are not able to be economically viable.”
Just as it has always been a fixture of any night out on the Cross, the 1880s-vintage Bourbon Hotel has been front and centre of the battle over the Arnaout plan.
Under the original $47m development application to Sydney City Council in 2017, the striking structure framed by double-height Italianate arches and Corinthian columns was to have been bulldozed, along with four adjoining buildings. But the fierce community backlash put paid to the plan. Arnaout’s Iris Capital Group went back to the drawing board with new architects, settling on a scaled-back redevelopment that kept the facade of the Bourbon.
The old Australian rules club, once home to the Sydney Swans, goes while the Empire Hotel and three-floor Lowestoft house are to be gutted, remodelled and raised in height. The imposing eight-storey Commodore building also gets the treatment. The number of upper-level apartments has been reduced to 54 in the revised redevelopment, which still runs the length of a block reaching back from the heritage-listed El Alamein Fountain to the art deco edifice of Kingsley Hall, a residential building. An underground carpark will plunge to a depth of four levels.
The catch with the $18.5m boost to the budget was to push the project out of council control into that of state body the Central Sydney Planning Committee, which the residents regarded as an easier sell for Arnaout. On July 22 he received the green light.
Greaves says the Bourbon has been her “home away from home” for all the years she had lived in and around the Cross with her late partner, Glenn. “We were at both the opening nights,” she says of the riotous launch party in 1967 for Bernie Houghton’s around-the-clock Bourbon & Beefsteak and when it was revamped as the Bourbon decades later. What it lacked in creature comforts, the bar more than made up for in ambience. From hosting thirsty US soldiers and marines during the Vietnam War, to hot bands and tired and emotional revellers, “it was just the centre of everything,” Greaves says. The new 400-seat venue will be a pale imitation in her view.
But her chief concern is for the 40-odd long-term residents in the Commodore building who stand to be made homeless. “I haven’t heard anyone say where these people will go,” she says. Big as the entertainment scene is, the Cross has always been about the people who call it home, for better or worse.
“It’s a live and let-live community and that’s what makes it special,” Greaves says. “Kings Cross is a state of mind … it has got a vibe no other place has got. And if you get rid of those beautiful buildings, that’s it as far as I am concerned. You will turn it into something ordinary.”
Potts Point and Kings Cross Heritage and Residents Society president Andrew Woodhouse says there is no doubt the Bourbon has seen better days. “It was tacky,” he says of the well-worn decor. “There’s nothing wrong with redeveloping it providing the new building is sympathetic to its surrounds and respects the heritage and the conservation values of the area in which it sits.
“Unfortunately, that’s not the case here. I think architects forget a lot of the time that their ideas don’t sit in splendid isolation; they exist within an urban context.”
Martin Denny, of Kingsley Hall, says the strata management committee obtained engineer’s advice that the structural integrity of the stately 1929 building would be jeopardised by the heavy construction work. This was submitted to the Central Sydney Planning Committee, to no avail.
Johnston, an owner in the nearby Manhattan building, is dreading the anticipated four years of noise and disruption.
In rejecting the complaints of a “vocal few” in the Cross, Arnaout, 45, says the project will be an “exemplar” for a site of national importance. The one-time panel beater who rose to run a $3bn property and hotels business says: “As a developer we have listened to the wider community and that is reflected in the changes we made. Yes, there may be people that might still not like what’s been arrived at, but that’s OK because it can’t be something where 101 per cent of the population is going to be for you.”
He insists the residential density is well under planning limits and the design preserved key heritage elements of the old buildings, a claim dismissed by Greaves who points out the best way to do that would be to keep them intact.
Independent state MP for Sydney Alex Greenwich welcomes the investment. “This current proposal is certainly an improvement on the previous iteration from a heritage and public benefit point of view,” he says.
Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, a member of the Central Sydney Planning Committee, says it was time to start a “new chapter” in the Cross with the end of the lockout era and, hopefully, of Covid too. Council staff had worked hard to develop the planning controls that allowed the project to finally be approved. “The new development will preserve the facade of the Bourbon, the Kingsley Hall building and the site of the Empire Hotel, which we recommended for heritage listing to protect the area’s significant social, cultural and historical value,” Moore says.
Woodhouse concedes the cause is lost, though that won’t stop the local agitators from airing their concerns. One test will be whether the 300-odd conditions attached to the development approval – covering everything from site access to noise levels and measures to avoid damage to surrounding buildings – are policed. Woodhouse is not holding his breath.
Greaves says Arnaout’s claim that he worked with the community is a furphy. As far as she is concerned, the buildings in the firing line should be renovated within their existing shells, not folded into a development that rises to nine stories. In addition to two new pubs and the apartments above, there will be shops on the street level, a 59-room hotel and 80 below-ground car spaces. The Empire Hotel, site of the long-defunct Les Girls nightclub, will be rebuilt. Arnaout has left open the possibility that the once-racy venue could make a comeback.
“This is a significant development for Sydney and for Australia of an internationally recognised site,” the developer says, an assertion no one would dispute.
Let’s see what he delivers.